Chelonibia testudinaria
Chelonibia testudinaria is a species of barnacle in the family Chelonibiidae. It is native to the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Gulf of Mexico where it lives as a symbiont on sea turtles, being particularly abundant on the loggerhead sea turtle.

DinaKuzia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ChelonibiaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Cirripedia
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Cirripedia
- Motility
- stationary, attached, epibiontPBDB, for Cirripedia
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Cirripedia
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Chelonibia testudinaria on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrences- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene25%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
3 formations
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The named rock units Chelonibia testudinaria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chelonibia testudinaria and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Chelonibia testudinaria and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
85 taxa- Balanus3 sites
- Agassizia porifera2 sites
- Balanus niveus2 sites
- Lytechinus variegatus2 sites
- Nodipecten2 sites
- Rhyncholampas2 sites
- Acropora cervicornis1 site
- Acrothoracica1 site
- Arbacia1 site
- Argopecten1 site
- Arossia glyptopoma1 site
- Balanus concavus chesapeakensis1 site
- Balanus concavus glyptotoma1 site
- Balanus tintinnabulum1 site
- Balanus trigonus1 site
- Bothrocorbula wilcoxii1 site
- Chelonibia patula1 site
- Chesaconcavus tamiamiensis1 site
- Chicoreus (Phyllonotus) pomum1 site
- Clypeaster1 site
- Clypeaster sunnilandensis1 site
- Columbella rusticoides1 site
- Conradostrea sculpturata1 site
- Conus (Contraconus) adversarius1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Chelonibia testudinaria, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Eocene Balanidae of Florida, Including a New Genus and Species with a Unique Plan of "Turtle-Barnacle" Organization3
- The occurrence of the coronuloid barnacle Chelonibia Leach, 1817 as an encruster on mammalian bone in the central Mediterranean Sea1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Chelonibia testudinaria
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- DinaKuzia
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chelonibia testudinaria was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itChelonibia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)